


Reality In Motion

by seibelsays



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Choose Your Own Ending, Gen, I recognize canon but given that it's stupid canon I've elected to ignore it, Other, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov - Freeform, Steve Rogers/Peggy Carter - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 04:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seibelsays/pseuds/seibelsays
Summary: There was a reason he’d saved returning the Soul Stone for last.





	Reality In Motion

Steve hesitated before pressing the button. 

This was it. The last stone. His mission was almost complete.

Then what?

He supposed he’d figure that out when he got there. He had to get this done first.

And that meant seeing Nat again. Just before…

Before.

There was a reason he’d saved returning the Soul Stone for last. 

He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and steeled himself against what was to come. He had a vague idea of what to expect from what Clint had reported when he’d returned the first time, but hearing it and experiencing it were two completely different things. He wasn’t sure he was ready - if he could ever be ready. But it was his job. He didn’t ask anyone else to come with him for a reason.

He pressed the button.

A blink later and Steve found himself standing in the purple shaded expanse of Vormir. He could just make out Clint and Nat’s voices carried over the wind.

“Don’t you get all decent on me now,” Clint said.

“You think I want to do it? I’m trying to save your life, you idiot,” Nat snapped back.

Steve hurried to the rest of the way up. Just as he crested the ridge and made his way onto the plateau, he saw Nat and Clint fighting it out to determine who would survive to take the stone back to the team. 

“Tell my family I love them,” Clint said, his voice breaking a little.

“Tell them yourself,” Nat insisted, her tone infused with steel.

Watching the two of them fight had always fascinated Steve. Even now, knowing how this would end, he had trouble looking away. It was like watching two dancers, in perfect synchrony. Deadly synchrony, but still. It was a sight to behold. 

He finally tore his eyes away to glance at the gatekeeper. Something about the way Clint had described him had bothered Steve and he wanted to see for himself what this gatekeeper looked like. The gatekeeper wasn’t looking his way, so Steve carefully picked around the rocks until he could see - 

Ice filled his veins, as though he’d plunged into the Atlantic all over again. No. No, it couldn’t be.

The gatekeeper was the Red Skull?

Steve’s mind flashed back to the last time he’d seen the being once known as Johann Schmidt. He’d always assumed that he’d been vaporized by attempting to hold the Tesseract - clearly that wasn’t the case. But it didn’t make any sense at all that he would have ended up here, ensuring an appropriate sacrifice was made to obtain the Soul Stone. Unless - 

“Let me do this!” Clint sobbed.

“Not today,” Steve muttered. He launched himself out from behind the rock he’d been crouched behind and towards the Red Skull. He reared back and threw a right hook as hard as he possibly could.

Contact.

The Red Skull went flying backwards towards the cliff, flailed a little at the edge, and sailed over the side into the ravine below. 

Clint and Nat stood frozen, staring into the ravine, arms still locked in their grapple, before they turned toward him in unison.

If the circumstances were different, Steve might have laughed at their shocked expressions.

“Steve,” Nat breathed.

“What did you do?” Clint demanded, his voice cracking. “What did you do?”

Steve grabbed the case that had carried the stones and tossed it towards them. Nat snatched it and hugged it to her chest, still staring at him wide-eyed.

“You know what this means,” she said.

“I do.”

“The stone,” Clint said, “it’s in there?”

“Check for yourself. I was bringing it back. From my reality, I guess.”

Nat carefully opened the case. “It’s here,” she breathed, before quickly closing the case again.

“Go on,” Steve said, motioning back toward their ship. “You have a universe to save.”

Clint nodded at him, giving him a clap on the shoulder before heading back down the ridge to the ship. Natasha didn’t move.

“Do I want to know how that would have ended up?” she asked.

Steve gave her a wry grin. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

“Did we win? Where you came from? Or are you still trying to change things?”

“We did. We won.”

She shook her head. “Then why risk it? One life in the grand scheme of it all-”

“Any reality that plays this sick game can wither and die for all I care,” he replied vehemently. “Besides, it doesn’t make any sense that the Red Skull would be the gatekeeper here. He held the Tesseract in his hand and vanished right in front of me almost 80 years ago. Who or what was the gatekeeper here before that?”

Natasha blinked. “You mean-”

“It was a game. An illusion. He somehow wound up here with no way home, so he invented something to do. He was a sick man in my time. His isolation here only made it worse.”

Natasha stared at him for a moment, considering. “What are you going to do now?”

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She gave him a small smile. “Well. Since you’ve already changed things - already created an alternate reality - maybe you could go find some of that life you’ve been looking for.”

Steve looked at her in surprise. He hadn’t thought about that. Once he’d figured out what the Red Skull was doing, he’d simply acted. “I did change things, didn’t I? This is a whole new reality.”

Natasha nodded, then stepped forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I would normally say that second chances don’t come around that often, but you seem to be the exception to that rule.” Her grin grew into just a little bit of a smirk. “If you’re going to mess with reality anyway, go big or go home. Make the most of it, okay? For everyone - anyone - that didn’t make it where you came from.”

She stepped away and headed down the ridge to join Clint in the ship.

Steve watched her go, waiting on the cliff top until he saw the _Milano_ lift into the sky and dash away. Once he was sure they were gone, he considered the device in his hand.

In theory, his job was done. His mission was complete. He could go home - or, more accurately, back to where he came from. But for what? Peggy was gone, Nat and Tony were gone. He had Bucky and Sam and the rest, sure. But for all the time he’d spent in the future, had he ever really lived there?

Nat was right - this was a whole new reality now.

He could find Peggy. Get that dance and live a life. 

He could free Bucky from HYDRA - hell, he could prevent Bucky from ever falling from the train in the first place. He could stop the 107th from being captured at Azzano, saving all those men. He and Bucky could find the end of the line together, without their lives turning into a comic book fantasy, the way they imagined all those lifetimes ago.

He could stop Tony from ever being abducted and tortured in that cave, or Bruce from ever getting hit with all that gamma radiation, or Nat from ever being taken by the Red Room.

He could join the Avengers of this reality in fighting Thanos and then maybe ask Nat to dinner. See if maybe she wanted to join him in finding a life.

He could go and see his mother again. He could meet his father.

He smiled at all the possibilities that lay before him and suddenly it was all clear. He knew exactly where he wanted to go.

He pressed the button.

**Author's Note:**

> So. What do _you_ think Steve did? Where did he go?


End file.
